this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Hot take: let this brain rot format die already. If you cannot hold your attention for longer than a few minutes at a time, you might want to work on that instead of embracing it.
Current research suggests that declining attention is most likely caused by an expectation of quality rather than actual personal issues. Condensing information is a valuable skill an people do not have time for middle length content just to be disappointed.
You might want to give some sources for that claim.
This article from Time summarizes quite well my view of the issues related to attention span. This is certainly not limited to the likes of tiktok or twitter, but I think those can be considered as representing two of the worst platform formats for meaningful content.
This article at bbc references the time as misguided.
This article shows that measuring attention spans is not that easy and our world is more distracting. Not a good think but it does not blame the people.
This Booktuber got some sources and a nice way of presenting it.
One might argue I am splitting hairs and I do not blame you if you think that. I hope some people think harder about their focus and how to find some calm moments. Yet I say that while searching up sources because I got a mobile notification.
Do you not think some people doomscroll lemmy, only reading titles and looking at image posts?
Sure, there are those people, but that's not the point here. Lemmy doesn't enforce some arbitrary short length to its posts in an attempt to force the users to engage more with the platform instead of the actual content. The same cannot be said of tiktok or twitter, for example.
Maybe but it's not the point of it. An infinite scrollable shorts/tiktok like is meant to be doomscrolled
I watch YouTube shorts sometimes, the algorithm gives me mostly comedy, usually some type of shketch where one person plays all the characters. I've also seen quick tip or educational videos, outdoor clips. None of what I engage with is doomscroling.
1 - Even when educational you can't retain all the infos that these short videos give you
2 - Log out of YouTube, and watch the default YouTube shorts feed, you would be amazed how this is a concentrate of shitty posts.
1 - I'm not going to YouTube shorts to be educated, but if Hank Green shows up and drops a fact on me that'll entertain me for 30 seconds, I'm good. It's not doomscrooling which was your original point.
2 - Well yeah that's a bad idea on most content websites, just because the lowest common denominator content is bad doesn't mean it's bad once you curate what you want to watch.
2 - but that's the problem! All the new accounts, which are very often children just growing up, get bombarded with the most evil and actively damaging shit, and they don't have the ability to curate whatever comes to them, they don't even know that they need to do that. And if you aren't spending hours upon hours on the platform, you don't have time to curate the algorithm anyway, so you will be served poison
It really depends on how you implement it. Look up Jaden Williams or ailaughatmyjokes (Silvia), some of their videos could be a really good example of how to do good shorts.
There are several content creators that started with short video and then moved on on Youtube that I just love and adore. Their short stuff is good. But when they aren't constrained by the format and can do whatever they want, they do videos that are so much better it's unbelievable.
Yes I want a full-featured documentary about a cute baby hippo. You're right.